Will Lake Casitas in Ventura County be full again and spill over?
As of April 4, just before Condor Call’s deadline, it’s at 97.6% capacity, which is 238,000 acre-feet.
The last time water spilled over the Casitas Dam was in 1998 due to extensive drought conditions and usage. But over the last year with “atmospheric rivers” pummeling the county, it started to slowly fill. Climate change indeed.
Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County has already spilled, but it has State Project water to help fill it and survive decades of stingy rain; not so for Casitas which primarily serves the Ojai Valley and western Ventura.
The Casitas Dam was completed in 1958 to create the Lake Casitas Reservoir. The lake first reached full capacity and spilled in 1978. Readers may remember how our Chapter vice-chair, Jim Hines, has often mentioned that the project flooded his family’s ranch where he grew up.
Meanwhile, the remnants of an old elementary Santa Ana school, which was submerged under Lake Casitas for decades, were ‘rediscovered’ in 2016 when the drought uncovered what’s left of it. The school was constructed in the early 1900s and razed in 1957 to create Lake Casitas. The school's foundation was buried under 69 feet of water for more than five decades until the 2016 drought uncovered that piece of history.